prohibition
Americannoun
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the act of prohibiting.
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the legal prohibiting of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks for common consumption.
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Often Prohibition the period (1920–33) when the Eighteenth Amendment was in force and alcoholic beverages could not legally be manufactured, transported, or sold in the United States.
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a law or decree that forbids.
- Synonyms:
- interdiction
noun
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the act of prohibiting or state of being prohibited
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an order or decree that prohibits
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(sometimes capital) (esp in the US) a policy of legally forbidding the manufacture, transportation, sale, or consumption of alcoholic beverages except for medicinal or scientific purposes
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law an order of a superior court (in Britain the High Court) forbidding an inferior court to determine a matter outside its jurisdiction
noun
Usage
When was Prohibition? Prohibition refers to a period in American history when the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcoholic beverages was made illegal. The law, which was created by the Eighteenth Amendment (ratified in 1918) to the United States Constitution and subsequently reversed by the Twenty-first Amendment (ratified in 1933), proved largely unpopular.
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Prohibition is often mentioned in discussions of how much social change can be brought about through law, because alcohol was widely, though illegally, produced and sold during Prohibition; it was served privately in the White House under President Warren Harding, for example.
Many use the example of Prohibition to argue that more harm than good comes from the enactment of laws that are sure to be widely disobeyed.
Some states and localities (called “dry”) had outlawed the production and sale of alcohol before the Prohibition amendment was adopted. The repealing amendment allowed individual states and localities to remain “dry,” and some did for many years.
Other Word Forms
- Prohibitionist noun
- antiprohibition adjective
- nonprohibition noun
- preprohibition noun
- prohibitionary adjective
Etymology
Origin of prohibition
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English, from Latin prohibitiōn-, stem of prohibitiō “prevention”; equivalent to prohibit + -ion
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But Sam Altman said on X that OpenAI believes in “prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems.”
From MarketWatch
But Sam Altman said on X that OpenAI believes in “prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems.”
From MarketWatch
The OpenAI chief says the deal for the Pentagon to use its tools in classified settings includes the same prohibitions that Anthropic had wanted.
Gen. Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the city of El Cajon for multiple violations of the license plate sharing prohibition.
From Los Angeles Times
The first is prohibition—ban AI, police it, punish violations, and hope the old learning model survives.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
